Home delivery for many products is available in a wide variety of locations. The proliferation of the internet and online retailers, for example, means that users can order everything from televisions to groceries online (or on the phone). In many cases, these items can be delivered within a day or two, or sometimes even within a couple of hours. To this end, it can be helpful to have the above-mentioned merchandise located in local warehouses. In a large city, for example, a large online retailer may have multiple warehouses in different locations in the same city to minimize delivery time and costs.
The efficiency of any warehouse, however, is based in part on the efficiency with which the space in the warehouse is utilized, sometime quantified as gross cubic utilization (GCU). GCU can be expressed as a fraction, or percentage, of the total volume of storage space in the warehouse over the total volume of the warehouse itself. Thus, warehouses with a high percentage of shelving space to floor space and those with densely packed shelves, for example, will have a higher GCU than less densely packed warehouses.
It can be difficult, however, to remove items from tightly packed storage solutions or oddly shaped items using conventional robotics technology. Accurate placement of robotic arms to pick densely packed items, for example, is one challenge. In addition, the goal of making robotic aims with manipulators thin enough to fit between densely packed items is at odds with the goal of making the manipulators strong enough to pick up items of any significant weight. Thus, human workers are often relegated to manually pick densely packed or oddly shaped items, which can increase costs.